Chapter 5 - The Sanctuary of Ashes
|
The row house on Emerald Avenue was small, weathered, and hidden between two abandoned brick warehouses.
WeEDS choked the sidewalk, and the streetlights had been shot out years ago by neighborhood gangs.
To the world, it was a forgotten scar in South Chicago.
To me, it was the only fortress left on earth.
It took twenty grueling minutes to drag Gabriel up the narrow wooden steps and onto the sofa in the living room.
The air inside smelled of dust, dried lavender, and old memories.
I immediately pulled the heavy blackout curtains shut, locking every deadbolt on the reinforced front door.
Gabriel collapsed against the threadbare floral cushions, his chest heaving under the blood-soaked bandages.
The fever had taken hold with ferocious intensity.
His forehead burned like an iron skillet, and his veins showed black and swollen against his pale neck.
"The aconite," he groaned, tossing his head from side to side in delirium.
"It’s... tearing my heart apart."
I rushed into the bathroom, rummaging through my late grandmother's medicine cabinet.
My grandmother had been a nurse at Cook County Hospital for forty years, and she had hoarded medical supplies like gold.
I found sterile gauze, surgical tape, antiseptic iodine, and two vials of atropine sulfate she had kept for emergency cardiac resuscitation.
I ran back to the living room, tearing open Gabriel's designer dress shirt with trembling fingers.
The sight of his chest stole the air from my lungs.
Beneath the sprawling black tattoo of an archangel crushing a serpent were three jagged bullet holes.
The flesh around the entry points was necrotic and purple, oozing a foul, oily discharge.
"Hold still," I whispered, pouring half a bottle of iodine directly into the wounds.
Gabriel’s body arched off the couch, his back stiffening like an iron rod as he choked down a scream.
His left hand shot out, catching my wrist in a vice-like grip that bruised my skin.
"Do it," he hissed through blood-flecked teeth.
"Don't stop... Matilda."
I used sterile forceps to pack the wounds with antibacterial dressing, my hands operating on pure instinct.
Then, drawing the clear liquid from the atropine vial into a syringe, I tapped the air bubbles out.
"This should stabilize your heart rate," I said, looking into his fever-glazed eyes.
"If it doesn't... your heart will stop again."
"Do I look like... a man who dies easily?" he whispered, a shadow of his lethal arrogance returning to his lips.
I drove the needle into his thigh muscle, depressing the plunger completely.
Gabriel shuddered, his head falling back against the cushions as the drug surged through his bloodstream.
For ten terrifying seconds, his breathing ceased entirely.
The room plunged into an agonizing, suffocating silence.
"Gabriel?" I begged, leaning over him, pressing my ear against his bare, scarred chest.
"Come back. Please, Gabriel, come back."
Thump.
The sound was louder this time.
Thump. Thump.
A deep, ragged gasp tore from his throat as his chest expanded, drawing in a lungful of air.
His eyes opened, no longer clouded with death, but blazing with the dark, terrifying intelligence that had ruled Chicago’s underworld for a decade.
He looked up at the ceiling, then turned his gaze slowly to me, still kneeling beside his bloodied couch.
"The poison is breaking," he murmured, his voice gaining strength with every breath.
"You brought me back from the grave, little maid."
I slumped against the edge of the coffee table, burying my trembling face in my hands as the adrenaline crashed.
"I'm not a maid anymore," I sobbed, the tears finally breaking through.
"I'm a dead woman walking."
Gabriel reached out, his rough, calloused palm cupping the back of my neck with surprising tenderness.
May you like
"No," he said, pulling my gaze up to meet his unyielding eyes.
"As long as I draw breath in this city, you are untouchable."
